


Soul Cake Tuesday

by oneatatime



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27243709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneatatime/pseuds/oneatatime
Summary: Date: Soul Cake Tuesday, Year of the Justifiably Defensive LobsterReport 110127, Vimes, CommanderProb Assassination Attempt, Soul Cake Tuesday, Vetinari(Nobby, make copies and file under Assassination and Patrician, and this time I don’t want to see clotted cream fingerprints)
Relationships: Sybil Ramkin/Havelock Vetinari/Samuel Vimes
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Soul Cake Tuesday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bittercape (bittercape)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittercape/gifts).



**Sybil:**  
Soul Cake Tuesday, evening  
  
Hello, once again, journal. I would like to enquire as to your health, though isn’t that silly? You are a book; a collection of pages. Yet, you are a very helpful book, to whom I might tell anything, and it seems somewhat rude to ignore your health.  
  
Hmm.  
  
Let me see. The events of the day.

Sometimes one must gently encourage one’s patient and diplomatic husband to attend affairs for the city which will induce goodwill and trust between citizens of Ankh-Morpork and citizens of Genua, Uberwald, and Ob.  
  
At other times, of course, one must bludgeon one’s husband (metaphorically!) by laying out his good tights and the Soul Cake Tuesday headdress (for the delight of the children) and informing him in no uncertain terms that this is required.  
  
Sam was highly unimpressed. I would know this from his stance, and his general demeanour. To be helpful, he also made a comment describing himself as looking as though he’d been excreted from a duck’s bottom.  
  
Having significant experience with excrement, myself, as I had just mucked out Whindlypop Fotherboots the Third’s crate, I stepped closer to him in an attempt to silently remind him that even the duties he does not enjoy must be attended to. However, the scent did not seem to compel him to move with more speed. I was then reminded of both the sheer nasal weight of the cigars that he consumes, and the medical diagnosis of the congealing of his nasal passages. It is not that he cannot smell; but he is largely immune to it.  
  
I informed him that the Patrician of our fair city had requested his service, to which he replied that our fair city was much more foul than fair and could I not smell what was issuing through the window. At this point, I opened a small paper in my pocket, received only that morning. It was from the Patrician. A comment about how Sam would make the fair / foul comment and perhaps he would indulge him, Havelock himself, by assisting with the fowl celebrations instead of complaining to me, for all that he was quite sure I was more than capable of enduring it.  
  
Sam grumbled, and went off to get changed.  
  
(He returned halfway through, hopping on one silver-plated boot, to shamefacedly kiss me on the cheek and apologise for being an old silly. Well, perhaps those are my words, not his, but the emotion was genuine. As always I did not take his grumbling words – very much not directed at me - to heart. He is a good husband and always shows me care.) He then vanished for some hours before the actual ceremony, but I am accustomed to that. 

Matters went so terribly wrong today. I was able to assist, for which I am grateful. I am also very grateful, as always, that Sam was there, though he was somewhat more ballistic than expected.  
  
  
  
**Vetinari:**  
S C T  
  
The Soul Cake Duck is an estimable fellow, and so too is His Grace, The Duke of Ankh, Ambassador for Ankh-Morpork, Blackboard Monitor, Sir Samuel Vimes, commander of the Watch.  
  
Thank the gods for Sybil Vimes.  
  
MCK-53662  
  
?? &, THEN ()  
  
wbkotter - **15*53662  
  
Thank the gods for Sam Vimes, as well, I suppose. [enunciated dawn]  
  
As the dust falls / so must we scale  
The wind is bright; lo, though we endure  
We endure  
  
(chocolate)  
  
  
  
**Vimes:**   
Date: Soul Cake Tuesday, Year of the Justifiably Defensive Lobster  
Report 110127, Vimes, Commander  
Prob Assassination Attempt, Soul Cake Tuesday, Vetinari  
  
_(Nobby, make copies and file under Assassination and Patrician, and this time I don’t want to see clotted cream fingerprints)_  
  
  
  
Request made of one (1) Samuel Vimes, Commander (1) to attend Soul Cake Tuesday festivities on Round Head Hill. This was advised previously, however dress was not advised, to wit, one Soul Cake Duck headdress that made one look entirely witless. 

Protest was not of assistance at this juncture, and so attendance occurred.  
  
Commander, Watch, does not object to good quality chocolate in small doses*, and to variable quality children in smaller doses. Commander, Watch, does object to being in a public place searching for begrassed confectionery while issuing a quacking sound that one child advised was more akin to a dog with a party squeaker lodged rectally.  
  
*tastes odd when cigarette ash and chalk leavings are left out  
  
Commander, Watch, has more objections when Waffle Johnny turns up and starts hurling cutlery. 

Commander, Watch, observed the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork grab a knife out of the air. Commander, Watch, while running, then saw the Lady Sybil Vimes take a single step up the hill to shift herself in front of him and the small child to whom he’d been speaking, just as he went down with another knife buried in one shoulder. 

The third knife grazed her hip, and the Commander, Watch, does not wish to ever again see such a look of acceptance on the face of the Lady Sybil Vimes as she clutches a hand to a spreading pool of blood on her person. It was a relatively small pool of blood. The Commander, Watch, has seen bigger. Nevertheless, it was felt that the Lady Sybil’s blood belongs inside her person, and not outside it. 

Neither wound was fatal. 

The fourth knife did not leave Waffle's hand, as by that point Captain Carrot had punched him into the welcoming embrace of Sergeant Detritus. 

The complicating factor came from Waffle Jimmy's companion, name presently unknown, with a crossbow on top of the Old Goat. Commander, Watch, had modified the blasted Soul Cake Duck headdress with its own weaponry, and made his own complicated ricochet shot. 

Commander, Watch, is reliably informed that the ballistic arse of the headdress can be repaired, though Commander, Watch, cannot force himself to mind terribly much. 

* * *  
  
Vimes paced back and forth in his living room.  
  
Everything was all right. Now.   
  
Carrot, his captain, a man with a good grasp of police work and a bad grasp of punctuation, stood outside his front door. He could trust Carrot, who was smart in his own way, ethical, and honest, in spite of Ankh-Morpork.  
  
Vetinari-  
  
Angua was out the back, ‘napping’ in the shade on an ‘old dog blanket’. He trusted her, too. The only person who moved faster than she did was Nobby when he knew someone was after the petty cash. Willikins was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for what was sure to be a horrifically healthy pie at some point tomorrow.  
  
Vetinari and-  
  
Colon and Visit were at the Watch House, and he’d trusted Fred Colon to take care of the rest of the paperwork, with Visit’s help with the trickier commas. Detritus and Lucy were on patrol, both terrifying in their own ways, when they wanted to be. Unlike Nobby who’d recently accused a suspect of being a relative. Vimes’d had to sit down and talk to him about reasonable use of force and why we don’t make hardened criminals cry.  
  
Vetinari and Sybil were upstairs, being seen to by Doctor Lawn.  
  
There.  
  
He’d said it, in a narratively kind of way.  
  
Neither one was badly hurt, but Vimes’ throat still hurt from the way he’d snapped for Mossy Lawn, and so they’d both ended up here in his house. His. _His._

Lawn came stomping down the stairs, stripping off his gloves, bag under his arm. He raised a weary hand to Vimes. “They’re both resting,” he said. “Gave them something for the pain. Next time you get people sliced up, can you try to make it something more creative than knives? How about a soup spoon assassin? Maybe a cake fork? That’d take creativity.” 

Vimes growled under his breath, shakier than he wanted to be, and Lawn had a hand on his shoulder in an instant.

“I know,” he said gently. “Sorry. They’re both all right. Stop worrying. Go up.” 

Lawn’s eyes were big, and far too understanding, under his scruff of greying hair.  
  
Vimes managed to pat him on the back as the man left. 

* * *

At his ~~demand~~ request, the two of them had been placed in the overstuffed, oversized marital bed. It was – it was in fact not the first time that the two of them had been in that bed together, but that was something that Vimes himself did not know how to name, something that Vetinari did not see a reason to name, and something that Sybil simply looked very smug about. So he carefully, quite carefully never thought too far about the times that she’d bring “Havelock” home when he, Vimes, was particularly fretty, or the times that she’d send him to Vetinari’s offices for some trumped-up reason. 

(He supposed there were times when she was in need, too, though that was always much more difficult for him to identify. He just generally tried to be good to her, and he knew that Vetinari did the same.)  
  
“We’re alive, Vimes.” 

“Sir,” Vimes said stiffly, standing at the foot of the bed. His eyes darted in panic. He didn’t want to show too much vulnerability, never wanted that in fact, and if anyone’d asked then he would’ve calmly asserted that his tough outer shell went all the way to the centre of him, and then he would’ve told Nobby to stop drinking tea that was twelve years past the expiry date just because it was cheap. 

But Sybil. 

Sybil, who was pale, had the covers drawn up to the nasty bump of bandage under her pink nightie, and had that particular tightness around her eyes. She held a hand out to him just as Vetinari snorted, and said, “Don’t ‘sir’ me here, Sam.” 

So he went, and he kissed her, and he poured a little water for her from the jug that Lawn had helpfully left out, and if the scene was a little blurry, well. It was late, that’s all. 

“Do you need anything, H-Havelock?” he managed, eventually.

“No. Just you, you fool.” 

Sybil was nodding. “He’s quite right, Sam. It’s time for bed.” 

“I thought I’d sleep in the guest room-?” 

“ _No_ ,” they said together. 

He found himself shaking, and he found himself swearing under his breath about the shaking and the fact that they were united together, and the fact that they were _together_ to be united against him nearly broke him. The moment when he'd seen that *glint* of the second bastard on top of the Old Goat Tower, then he'd practically levitated into position to make the shot that he'd practiced repeatedly earlier that day... 

It paid to be a miserable, distrusting bastard, but what it mostly paid was flashbacks and tension. 

Sybil tchhed. “If you go to the guest room, you won’t sleep. I know you, Sam.” 

“If I relax,” he said through gritted teeth, “something else will go wrong.”

“Yes. And your eminently capable staff will take care of it. Come here.” 

Somehow, he found himself changing into his own nightshirt, and he found himself crawling up the middle of the bed. He was a good copper. He knew how to ignore orders, and he knew how to give orders, and when he was desperately outnumbered and desperately in need? Maybe then, he knew how to follow orders. 

He settled in, with Sybil’s face pressed against his neck, and with Havelock’s not-smiling smile against his own shoulder from behind. Two arms across his hip. 

Couldn’t’ve moved if he’d tried. 

He was asleep half a moment later.


End file.
